San Antonio Recommended Plant List

I hadn't seen this before, but the city of San Antonio has a

Recommended Plant List -All Suited to Xeriscape Planting Methods

SAWS also has a list  used to qualify for landscape rebates.

Texas A&M's AgriLife has free Xeriscape book.

The San Antonio Chapter of the Texas Native Plant Society recommends these books:

Recommended Books on Native Texas Plants

These are a few of the many good books written about native Texas plants. Most of these books are commonly available at bookstores, libraries, and online sources.

How to Grow Native Plants of Texas and the Southwest, Revised and Updated Ed.,  by Jill Nokes, Univ. of Texas Press, 2001.

Landscaping with Native Plants of Texas, by George Oxford Miller, MBI Publishing Co., 2006.

Native Plants in Landscaping: Trees, Shrubs, Cacti and Grasses of the Texas Desert and Mountains, by A. Michael and Shirley A. Powell, Iron Mountain Press, 2005.

Native Texas Plants: Landscaping Region by Region, Second Edition, by Sally & Andy Wasowski, Gulf Publishing, Co., 1997.

Texas Wildscapes: Gardening for Wildlife, by Noreen Damude & Kelly Conrad Bender, Texas Parks & Wildlife Press, 1999.

Texas Trees: A Friendly Guide, by Paul W. Cox and Patty Leslie, Corona Publishing Co., 1988.

100 Texas Wildflowers, by Dorothy Barid Mattiza, Western National Parks Assn., Tucson, AZ, 1993.

Scheduled River Improvements in San Antonio

The historic San Antonio River has long served as the heart of the city. Each year the world-renowned River Walk draws millions of visitors, yet miles of urban river with untapped potential lie beyond downtown and the famed Paseo del Rio. A comprehensive, multi-year project is underway to restore and enhance 13 miles of the San Antonio River both north and south of downtown.

The San Antonio River Improvements Project (SARIP) is a $384.5 million on-going investment by the City of San Antonio, Bexar County, San Antonio River Authority (SARA), the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) and the San Antonio River Foundation in flood control, amenities, ecosystem restoration and recreational improvements along 13 miles of the San Antonio River from Hildebrand Avenue south to Loop 410 South. Throughout the project, SARA will provide project and technical management, as well as overall project coordination between the project partners. SARA will also conduct on-going operation and maintenance activities when the project is completed.

SARIP is comprised of four distinctive reaches: The Museum Reach, a four-mile segment of the river from Hildebrand Avenue south to Lexington Avenue; the Downtown Reach, a segment of the original River Walk from Lexington Avenue to Houston Street; the Eagleland, a one-mile segment from South Alamo to Lonestar Boulevard; and the Mission Reach, a eight-mile section of the river extending from Lonestar Boulevard south to Loop 410 South.

A concerted community effort to revitalize the river began in 1998 when Bexar County, the City of San Antonio and SARA created the San Antonio River Oversight Committee. The 22 civic and neighborhood leaders appointed to the committee were given the responsibility of overseeing the planning, design, project management, construction and funding necessary to complete the project. In addition, the committee was charged with providing an open public forum for citizen input into the project's development. The Oversight Committee meets monthly and is co-chaired by former mayor Lila Cockrell and architect Irby Hightower.

http://www.sanantonioriver.org/

LA's methodology for similar project

LA did a similar project and there's a pretty thorough user guide online at http://www.labmpmethod.org/.  I think it will be very useful as we develop something like this ourselves.  Their approach was:

1. Prioritize catchments based on need (i.e., pollutant-loading, receiving water issues, etc.);
2. Identify potential BMPs opportunities within high priority catchments (based on factors such as land ownership, etc.);
3. Identify appropriate BMPs (based on factors such as cost, maintenance, effectiveness, etc.); and
4. Develop site-specific implementation strategies (based on site-specific evaluations).

Some questions I have:

• are we focusing on wet weather only or including dry weather?
• what pollutants?  bateria?  metals?  trash?
• what pollution data can we get?

Map Server

This is the City of San Antonio's Map server. They are using Flex Viewer which serves up ArcMap files.

San Antonio Map

And here are pre-made maps of San Antonio

Maps

"Site fingerprinting"

Yesterday Lee-Anne mentioned "site fingerprinting" and I wasn't really sure what that was so I looked it up. Here's what I found. I'm not really sure how this is different than a site analysis that includes environmental considerations...

 

1.1 What is Site Fingerprinting?

 

Site fingerprinting is a planning tool used to design communities where protection of natural resources is the primary focus. This process enables the user to view, identify, and analyze the natural, built, economic, and social aspects of a prospective site. Site fingerprinting has five key objectives:

• Identify general site features,
• Determine and locate primary and secondary conservation areas,
• Consider the impact of other important factors such as adjacent land uses, accessibility, transportation and infrastructure availability,
• Use collected information to derive the actual buildable area, and
• Synthesize this information to create various development scenarios which incorporate the natural features of the site."Synthesize this information to create various development scenarios which incorporate the natural features of the site."

 

 

http://crd.dnr.state.ga.us/content/displaycontent.asp?txtDocument=969

 

San Antonio neighborhood tours

http://www.saculturaltours.com/

Online tours + maps of San Antonio done by city's Office of Cultural Affairs.

Westside
Downtown/ North river
Eastside

Edwards Aquifer Protection Program

http://www.tceq.state.tx.us/compliance/field_ops/eapp/program.html

"Anyone who plans to build on the recharge, transition, or contributing zones of the Edwards Aquifer must first have an application including construction plans approved by the TCEQ. Personnel from the Edwards Aquifer Protection Program review these plans. If a plan is approved, the site is monitored for compliance."

Includes spreadsheet to calculate TSS.  Might be useful for quantifying advantages of our proposals?  Or sizing BMPs in our designs?